A big, pink wedding cake of a church, the 19th-century Cattedrale di Santa Maria della Neve is one of 300 or so Italian churches dedicated to the Madonna della Neve. The cathedral’s facade is a big flouncing neoclassical spread, giving onto a single-nave interior. Of note inside is Disputa de Gesù Fra i Dottori (Jesus Arguing with the Doctors), a canvas attributed to the school of Luca Giordano and located between the first and second chapels on the right.
The so-called Mary of the Snow earned her name after she supposedly appeared to Pope Liberius in a dream and told him to build a church on the site where it would snow the next morning. It promptly snowed the next day and the Pope commissioned what was to become the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome
